What We Do

Our vision is a radically inclusive community that honors the dignity of all people, so we leverage personal stories to help community members grow, connect, and heal. Today, programs include a season of public StorySlams and workshops, collaborations with businesses and nonprofits, and media partnerships that extend the reach of stories told onstage. In the past 14 seasons, Ex Fabula has hosted close to 1,000 storytelling events, engaged over 43,000 individuals, and brought over 1,700 stories to the stage in the Greater Milwaukee region. Our innovative community building efforts have been recognized with a MANDI award from LISC for our Deaf Storytelling programming and a Unity Award from Milwaukee Magazine.

StorySlams & Public Workshops

StorySlams are ticketed live storytelling events featuring local storytellers. All our slams feature true, personal stories related to a theme, told without props or notes. We offer public, private, and curated slams. Find tickets to our public StorySlams on our Events page or contact us to customize a StorySlam for your school, business, nonprofit or organization.

Brave Space Project

Brave Space is an affinity space created for Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and other folks of color to share stories. We created this space for storytellers of color in order to reduce the harm caused by and perpetuated by whiteness and stereotypes.

These gatherings hold space for people of the global majority to share their truths and personal experiences. They are facilitated by Ex Fabula’s experienced BIPOC storytelling coaches, who guide participants through interactive, small group activities. Sessions are free, and each one explores a theme relevant to current times.

The Deaf Stories Project

This project centers the stories of the Deaf community by hosting a free StorySlam where stories are shared on stage in ASL and translated to spoken English by an interpreter. Leading up to the StorySlam, Deaf storytelling coaches host free workshops for Deaf community members to build their storytelling skills and practice sharing their story in front of others.

Youth Affinity Storytelling

As part of Ex Fabula’s ongoing commitment to a radically inclusive community, Youth Affinity Storytelling aims to uplift the voices of the youth. Youth voices are an integral part of community building that often gets silenced, and Youth Affinity Storytelling allows youth the space to share personal stories and helps develop self-advocacy skills which can be leveraged when applying to post-secondary programs, seeking scholarships, and interviewing for jobs.

Equal Access Project

This project was started in 2016 and works to lower access barriers to Ex Fabula programming for individuals with disabilities, help individuals with disabilities to increase their storytelling skill and confidence, and amplify the stories of individuals with disabilities. We work with organizations across Milwaukee to offer free or low-cost workshops to individuals with disabilities and work to provide an individualized approach to accessibility to make sure anyone who wants to attend an Ex Fabula event has any accommodation they may need.

Community Collaborations

Ex Fabula works with organizations across the Milwaukee area to create storytelling spaces that promote equity, inclusion, knowledge sharing, community building, and more. Ex Fabula will work with you to create custom programming that fits the need of your community. View our Collaborate page to learn more about the types of collaboration we have been a part of in the past and contact us to see how our programming could enrich your organization.

Real Stories MKE

To further amplify Milwaukee stories we worked with 89.7 WUWM to start Real Stories MKE, a podcast and radio show hosted by Kim Shine and Joel Dresang. This show shares stories that are collected from monthly StorySlams as well as other projects and community collaborations and it centers on a different theme every week. Tune in to 89.7 WUWM select Sundays at 7pm to hear these stories!